Monday, January 29, 2018

Gray day, Brooklyn sidewalk, I'm carrying a couple of pretty heavy, bulky bags that require some energy to maneuver, so I'm walking pretty slow, trying to take up as little space as possible.

She passes me on the left: fur-lined, hooded jacket, jeans with giant yellow and red flowers embroidered on the cuffs tucked into her boots, striding fast.

Though she's enough faster than me to stay in front, she's not quite fast enough to beat the lights, so at each stoplight, I end up standing awkwardly next to her, or just back from her left shoulder. I'm careful not to pass her, but I can feel my usual competitive spirit getting riled.

We haven't been to this restaurant for many years. The food is still good, but the view from the enclosed rooftop, which was the draw back when we visited before, has changed substantially.

Before there was nothing out there but the water, the cacophony of the Financial District of Manhattan, and New Jersey, but now, shipping containers and giant cranes to lift them off of ships fill the horizon.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

"Yeah, man, I used to work at a doughnut shop, too," I tell the guy behind the counter in the dimly-lit diner with the display case of pastries and doughnuts.

"So you know what I'm talking about," he says as he goes to get us our order (a marble twist for me, a chocolate covered eclair for Katie). "I used to come home every night smelling of the things, and people would be like, 'Oh, you gonna bring us doughnuts?'"

Thursday, January 25, 2018

The cat is curled up on the chair in the living room, a picture of peace with her floof of a tail tucked perfectly around her.

"I'm going to have you stuffed exactly in that pose," Katie says to her. "No," she says, "I just want your skull."

After some discussion, we decide that having the skulls of our deceased pets on display would be a comforting thing, and not creepy at all.
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One year ago: Lockout
Two years ago: You Just Made It Mad!
Three years ago: Class Concerns
Ten years ago: Gloves

Monday, January 22, 2018

The guy pushes his way up to the counter next to Katie with a "Yeah, just move over there, why don't you try that," to the bewildered fellow who was standing there minding his own business a moment ago. Katie does a slow turn to take our new neighbor in, and while his scruffy beard, sandy feet, general unkemptness, and spiky, weird energy mark him as to-be-watched, his youth, necklaces, and painted fingernails give him up as one of the dissolute party-boys of the beach and boardwalk rather than some possibly more dangerous species of homeless person that drifts the streets of Miami Beach.

The gulls hover low over the sand, making visible the shape of the wind blowing in off the waves. Katie sleeps next to me on a towel, facing away from me down the beach south while the sun warms my skin. Just up the beach from us, a couple does acrobatic yoga, thereby demonstrating the complementary nature of the universe by balancing out our utter laziness with absolutely baffling and unnecessary physical activity.

I watch for a while, admiring their fitness and grace, as the woman of the couple slowly, carefully shifts on her partner's hands and feet, moving from a handstand, to plank, to standing on his palms as he holds her up in the air, until I grow bored and close my eyes.
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One year ago: For A Change
Two years ago: That Time Of Year
Three years ago: No Standing Under $100,000
Four years ago: Good Problems to Have

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Having finished shaking down all the patrons at the sidewalk tables, the gray cat walks back into the bistro and, after a moment's consideration, jumps up on the banquette just out of Katie's reach and begins to wash himself. I make a tsk-ing noise to attract his attention, but he ignores me completely and, if anything, washes with even more concentration.

Saturday, January 20, 2018

I take a couple deep breaths and step into the shower. The water is bitterly cold, but I've felt kind of weird all day - a little achy, a little emotional - so instead of feeling painful, it drives out all the other feelings and leaves me hollowed out and empty.

I hang with it for as long as I can, until my skin is chilled and my joints ache, and then I spin the faucet over to warm. The pipes begin to squeal as hot water goes through them, and all this tension I was carrying around without knowing it melts away, washed down the drain with the soapy water as I start to lather up.

Friday, January 19, 2018

When I arrive back in the waiting room after the nurse has taken my vitals (blood pressure decent, weight unfairly high since my shoes and clothes add at least a good five pounds), I see the cup of water, seemingly untouched, where I left it on the table before I went into the office.

Sitting on the other side of the table, an Asian woman gives me a polite smile as I sit down in my former seat.

Now I'm faced with a decision: I'm thirsty, and the cup of water is still here, full and ready for me to drink, but this woman doesn't know it was mine, and what will she think at this random man picking up a seemingly random glass of water and draining it.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

I finish up my daily yoga session lying on the floor, breathing deeply, thinking about a young friend of ours who's going through some stuff right now, and it gets me wondering what I was like when I was his age.

But I have a record of those days, in the form of literally dozens of notebooks that I kept with near daily entries on what was going on, and how I felt about it, so I can actually find out exactly what I was like.

I rummage through the shelf of Moleskines of various sizes, accounting books, hardbound artist's ledgers and spiral bound notebooks with pages falling out, until I find a small black leatherbound notebook with the words "Corporate Whore" pasted to the cover.

I flip through the pages with, at first, fascination, then growing horror, until I slowly close the book, retie the strap that keeps it shut, and place it back in its place on the shelf, before going back and moving it to the back of the shelf, behind some other books.

The stacks of clothes, while somewhat neatly folded and sorted on the bed (sweaters, shirts, pants, t-shirts), are really only a transfer of textiles from where they were piled on the floor to a few feet higher. And trying to figure out which ones to keep and which ones to donate to charity is seriously stressing me out.

Katie's doing her best to help while staying out of my way, but when I finally just give up and start putting things in drawers, only to find that I don't have the room, I get a little despairing.

"Okay, if you need me to help you with your drawers, that I can do, because those things are a nightmare," she says.

Monday, January 15, 2018

I wake up with a dry mouth and sand in my joints, but comfortable curled up under the comforter in our hotel room. We couldn't figure out the thermostat (or at least I couldn't) and the room just stayed kinda cold all night, but the alcohol and the insane amount of food we ate last night ensured that I was in no position to get out of bed to do anything, so I just burrowed into the warmest bed ever.

I turn over and throw an arm across Katie, bury my face in her shoulder, and, still moving carefully to make sure that my entire body except for my head stays under the covers, wrap my arms and legs around her sleeping form.

"You are so snuggly," she says groggily, and then we fall back asleep.

Sunday, January 14, 2018

The dog has good nights and bad nights. After a painstaking climb following her walk, she finally arrives on the landing at the top of the stairs and then tries to take another step, lifting her paw only to step on thin air.

Having done the same thing, I know exactly how she feels, that weird panic as you step through nothingness, the way the earth tilts a little even after you've found your footing again.

Saturday, January 13, 2018

The gray, foggy day turns to rain as we walk down 4th Avenue in Brooklyn after Katie's eye doctor appointment. Her pupils are still dilated, so I'm holding her hand to make sure she doesn't trip or fall, since she can't see.

"What was the doctor's name, again?" she asks as I dig through my bag for an umbrella.

Monday, January 8, 2018

The sidewalks are relatively clear, but the snow is piled in foot-high banks at the curbs and the sidewalks, with narrow paths cut through them where folks have worn them through. Sometimes you have to take turns walking through the cuts with your fellow pedestrians to avoid having to navigate the more treacherous berms between the streets and the sidewalks.

Then there's this asshole: paused at the crosswalk right in front of the narrow pathway through the snow pile, scrolling through her phone as the foot traffic stacks up behind her until finally, with a tsk of disapproval, somebody tromps over the ice to go around her, leading the rest of us to do the same.

She looks up from her phone guiltily when she realizes what's going on, but it's already too late, and everybody on the street has decided she's the worst human being they know.

"You know that moment when you've been inside all day?" I ask Katie. She's a few steps ahead of me, walking quickly toward the grocery store, as she neglected to wear a hat and the cold is getting fierce. "It's like your eyeballs have to get used to seeing things at a distance again."

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

I wake in the morning with a heaviness in my chest, but a half-hour of yoga and breathing exercises, along with a cold shower, seems to get me out of the woods.

Until, after an afternoon of rearranging stuff in our storage space and inventorying the handful of pieces we have left, the train ride back home suddenly goes south.

Muscles begin to cramp, chills, heat behind my eyes, a stabbing headache, and a marked lack of oxygen in the 2 train to Grand Army Plaza all hit at once, and I wonder, for a brief second, if I'm going to die like a small sparrow, shivering in the cold.

I shrink down into my jacket, breathing shallowly, and, as Katie pats me on the shoulder and says, "You're doing really well," I close my eyes.

Even wearing multiple layers (shirt, hoodie, scarf, overcoat, hat, heavy boots), I still feel the frigid cold creeping in as I descend to the vestibule of our building with the doge in my arms like a sack of fur and bones. Her head lolls to one side like her neck is broken, her tongue hangs out, but as soon as I reach the bottom floor and make to set her down, she rights herself and slips out the inner door with only a slight lopside to her lope.

Through the window, I see the empty New Year's street, asphalt dry and white with cold, void of cars and sidewalk scattered with salt. The doge and I stand at the glass, my breath shaping clouds of vapor in the air, and consider our lack of options, steeling ourselves for the stinging chill as I open the door to let us out into the night.

Monday, January 1, 2018

The in-flight movie I picked ("Atomic Blonde", a solid "B") is over, and I'm listening to a playlist I found on my phone that makes it seem like 1994 or so all over again.

I look out the window, and see the ground far below us covered in snow glowing pale in the moonlight. The occasional town sprouts from the earth like a bacterial growth or a computer chip, reaching out brilliant, glittering tendrils into the darkness of the surrounding countryside.

In between, there are rivers that divide the snow-covered surface and the cities, and the rivers snake and splinter through the frozen landscape while we hurtle through the air far above, hardly related to anything going on below in any way at all, when all of a sudden a song comes on, and everything makes sense.
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One year ago: Good Job
Two year ago: Ivory Soap
Ten years ago: So This Is The New Year